The University has announced this year's winners of the Westminster Employability Award in an online celebration.
On 11 June the University welcomed over 250 students, colleagues and guests to the Employability Awards Online Celebration 2020. The event celebrated students’ achievements in completing a variety of employability schemes throughout the year to help them prepare with the skills, knowledge, and networks to support the start of their own careers.
Caroline Lloyd, Director of Student and Academic Services at the University, hosted the event along with colleagues from the Careers and Employability Services and Alumni teams. Presentations of awards featured students who completed the Westminster Employability Award, which had a record-breaking year with over 2000 registrations and 198 completions - a 300 per cent increase from last year.
Other awards were for the Career Mentoring Scheme, Explore Teaching programme, and Placements. Along with student awards, the University thanked employers and mentors for providing valuable experiences to students.
In the Career Mentoring Scheme, winners of the Mentee Awards were Veronica Nitu, Tahira Bakhtiari, and Bridgit Baniba, while Aleeza Asif won the award from the National Mentoring Consortium (NMC) Mentoring Scheme. Winners of the Explore Teaching Students of the Year were Adriana Carbayosa Oyana, Olivia Reinvald and Sajida Khanom.
The Westminster Business School (WBS) Placement Students of the Year awards went to Martin Sikula for the long-term placement category and Ayesha Hurley for the short-term placement category. In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS), the long-term placement award went to Milena Aleksandrova and the short-term award went to Kyra-Lamar Araneta. The winners from the College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries (DCDI) were Chloe Farewell for the long-term placement and Michael Patcha for the short-term placement.
The Placement Employers of the Year were HM Treasury for the Large Organisation of the Year and i-movo for the Small or Medium Sized Enterprise of the Year.
All students who completed the Westminster Employability Award also received a digital badge for achieving either a Bronze, Silver or Gold Award, which they can add to their CV or their LinkedIn profiles to stand out from the crowd. 15 of the highest achievers won financial rewards, with 12 undergraduate students and three postgraduate students receiving £500 each.
The Westminster Business School Prize Winners were Radina Kimonova, the postgraduate winner, and Muhammad Shoiab, Mariia Kogan, Lillya Shakhpazayan and Anmol Mohanty as the undergraduate winners. In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the postgraduate winner was Mehak Tariq and the undergraduate winners were Sahra Abdulkadir, Luis Viera, Claudia Garcia and Farhat Sekandary. The College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries winners were Eda Molla Chousein as the postgraduate and Rajan Borkhataria, Simranjeet Garcia, Joanna Sitarz and Diana-Maria Fries as the undergraduate winners.
At the end of the event, the teams reminded students of the University’s commitment to stay with them on their journey after graduation with all the support available through the new scheme ‘Class of 2020’.
The Westminster Employability Award is an employability achievement award supporting students’ career and personal development by formally recognising the extra-curricular activities they complete during their time at the University of Westminster. It is designed to help students gain experience and develop key skills that employers want them to have.
Lloyd said about the awards: “It’s an amazing achievement from each and every student who has invested in their own career development by analysing their personal goals and strengths, exploring their career options and developing a range of transferable skills through the completion of academic, workplace and extracurricular activities throughout their studies at the University of Westminster.”
She later added: “Congratulations to everybody for participating in all these schemes. We are so proud of every single one of you. For those students who are winners today and are due to graduate, please do make sure you stay in touch.”
